I saw no “air cleared” on this wilderness issue in Katherine Johnson’s July 9 letter titled “Clearing the air about Wild Sky.” Quite the reverse as they – environmentalists – often ignore truth. The truth is the land that would be Wild Sky is under classification of “inventoried roadless areas,” with no timber harvest or road building allowed. For those who don’t understand, or those who would deceive us, this means simply that the land is already protected from logging and road building. My documentation comes from Forest Service headquarters in Mountlake Terrace in the form of a color-coded map titled “Inventoried Roadless Areas and Selected Forest Plan Allocations” dated May 2000. We don’t need more wilderness.
What do we really need? With global warming, we need to ensure our ability to fight wild fires that will most likely be on the rise in the near future. That means access for personnel and equipment, and that means roads. A quick look at the above-mentioned map and the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest map show that 80 percent or more of the west side of the Cascades from Mount Rainier to the Canadian border are comprised of existing wilderness, national park, inventoried roadless areas and watershed. At best it allows only limited access, which is inadequate to protect from fire and robs us of our rights to use public lands.
The former forest supervisor for the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest once told me that ancient wildfires here used to range up to a million acres in a season. This would equal about 60 percent of this national forest and occurred before logging and roads existed here. Imagine looking east from Puget Sound and watching 60 percent of the Cascades going up in smoke. This could happen again with total wilderness.
Lake Stevens
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
